


Nothing Scares Me Anymore

by FreshBrains



Series: Summertime Sadness [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, POV Cora, Past Abuse, Pining, Road Trips, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cora feels a tiny moment of relief, of <i>release</i> in a way, like they have a solid plan that will take up enough of her day so she doesn't have to spend all of her time thinking.  This sweet sinking feeling is what makes Cora reach into the pocket in her jeans and type out a text with adrenaline-spiked thumbs:</p><p><i>Wish you were here</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Scares Me Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first long Lydia/Cora fic, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. TRIGGER WARNINGS can be found at the bottom notes. Enjoy!

When they get to Reno, Cora is still smiling.

Her smile isn't like Derek’s—when he deigns himself to smile, it’s clear he puts everything he has into it. He smiles with his entire face and it lights up the room every time. But Cora’s smile is small, secret; she never likes to spend all of it in one place.

The road is a little rough but Derek is a sure driver—eyes on the road, ten and two, and even though Cora’s body jostles around in the passenger seat, she’s never felt safer.

“Let’s stop here,” she says, looking out the window at a scrubby children’s park near a duck pond, complete with an ancient-looking children’s ride-along train. There are kids and parents here and there; it’s busy and sweet, unlike Beacon Hills.

“You want to ride the train?” Derek asks, and laughs when Cora punches him on the shoulder.

“Maybe. You’d be right there with me,” Cora says.

They park by the water and the ducks flock away. They get out, stretch their legs, and then Cora sees the roses. Bright red, blooming lush against the dry grass, and before she can stop herself, she’s thinking of red lips and red hair and for a split second, her smile falters. Derek notices.

He wraps his arm around her shoulders. “Come on. Let’s do something fun.”

Twenty minutes later, Cora is sitting primly in a yellow train car, a dripping ice cream cone in one hand and a disposable camera in the other. “Say cheese!” She grins, ice cream dotting her nose, and Derek waves from his own green train car, where his knees are practically up by his ears and his head is ducked awkwardly beneath the battered awning.

It’s the most normal thing she’s done in years, and the red roses don’t seem so bad when they leave.

*

They drive for half the day and stay at a motel right on the border of Nevada and Utah where it is hot, rocky, and so dusty Cora’s white tee shirt looks grey just after the walk from car to room. They only have one bag each stuffed with clothes and a few odds and ends they managed to keep together after all their years away and apart. 

“Left side?” Derek asks, tossing his bag on the right-hand bed. Cora’s head snaps up in attention, and Derek meets her gaze.

Cora slept on the left side of her and Laura’s bedroom. It meant nothing, really, it was just something meaningless that _happened_ , but in a family made up of only broken fragments, it takes on a new meaning—not everything is forgotten, and not everything is lost.

Cora takes the left side, but halfway through the night, she wakes up sweaty and groaning, the sheets twisted around her body. 

“ _Derek_ ,” she hisses, sitting up in bed. “Derek, the stupid AC is busted!”

Derek makes a noise not unlike a cow giving birth and flops onto his stomach.

Cora wraps her hair in a bun on the top of her head and fans her neck. “Derek, I’m serious, it’s a fucking sauna in here.”

“Come sleep here,” Derek mumbles into his pillow. “The ceiling fan helps.”

Cora grumbles and crawls in next to Derek with only a little hesitation. The thing is, they were never that close—she loved her brother and he loved her in return, but that was it. It was a perfunctory kind of love that they were born with on account of being siblings and werewolves. It never had to be cultivated or nurtured, it was just there.

Derek’s scent is sharper than any of the other wolves Cora knows—he’s older and he’s grown into the earthy, musky smell of being a grown male wolf. His scent is all over the sheets and it puts Cora off at first, like she’s encroaching on someone else’s territory, but she falls asleep within seconds.

When they wake up, they are both sweaty and sticky and Cora is crying, but she can’t remember why.

*

Cora sends Lydia one text message in Salt Lake City. That’s all she allows herself.

She sits near a canyon, some big grey thing Derek insisted they visit even though the heat is hideous and Derek can’t seem to pick the perfect spot to take a picture. Cora is wearing hiking boots and one of Derek’s baggy Henley shirts with all the buttons loosened and the sleeves ripped off, but she’s still hot and her feet still hurt—she gets blisters and they heal in seconds, then more blisters form on the healed blisters, and the whole thing would be comical if it didn't make her so cranky.

Cora is cranky, but she’s not sad. Sadness is heavier, harder. She can deal with being cranky—her mother, her uncle, her sister, and her brother all excelled at the art of fine-tuned crankiness, culminating in epic eye-rolls and even more epic verbal smack-downs. Hales are innately a cranky people.

Derek cups his hands over his eyes and sighs, staring out into the hot opening in the earth. “Well, what do you think?”

Cora kicks a rock and watches its slow descent into the canyon. It sounds like the tinkling keys of a piano, glancing off rocks and brush until it goes so far Cora can’t hear it anymore. “It’s a big pile of dirt, Derek. What do you want me to say?”

He doesn't respond, not right away. He understands her need to snap sometimes, to get angry. It’s easiest to be angry with the ones who you know won’t leave you, no matter what. “Is there anywhere else you’d like to go before the beach?” He snaps another picture, then tucks the camera into his back pocket.

There are many places Cora would like to see. She spent too many years wandering California, alone and then with the alpha pack, and she longed to see the rest of the country, if not the rest of the world. “I want to see where Uncle Peter was born.”

This surprises Derek, Cora can see the exact moment when Derek chooses to mask his anger. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

Cora didn't know as much as she wanted to about her family history, but she knew they didn't have roots in Beacon Hills. Werewolves had tangled histories and long, sticky family lines—even though the Hale pack claimed territory in Beacon Hills for thirty years, that was barely a blip on the radar of the werewolf community. Her mother was born in Mumbai during a pack summit and spent half her life in India with her aunt before returning to the states and meeting her brother for the first time. Cora’s father was born in Pensacola and moved to Minneapolis as a teenager, where he lived until he met Talia during her travels and joined her pack. 

Peter was born in a mountain town in South Dakota, born into a broken pack and mostly alone until Talia moved back home. He grew up in snow and log cabins, snow shoes and heavy boots, a life Cora knew nothing about, and she suddenly longed to see where he came from, see where his roots grew. She hated him, but she couldn't forget him—she wanted to see the parts of him that were clean and innocent, the parts that existed before his anger took over his entire being.

“I think it would be good for me,” Cora says, plucking the camera out of Derek’s back pocket. She looks out into the hot air and takes a picture of a flock of birds flying out of the canyon, but she knows the picture will come out as a black blur of nothing.

Derek sighs. “We’ll take a detour. One day, then we’re back on the road.”

Cora feels a tiny moment of relief, of release in a way, like they have a solid plan that will take up enough of her day so she doesn't have to spend all of her time thinking. This sweet sinking feeling is what makes Cora reach into the pocket in her jeans and type out a text with adrenaline-spiked thumbs:

_Wish you were here_.

It’s silly, it’s simple, it’s a cliché, and it’s ultimately meaningless—she wishes her mother was there with her, she wishes Laura was there with her, she wishes Isaac, Erica, Boyd, and Stiles were there with her. But she wanted Lydia to know it.

After she sends the message, Cora tucks her phone away and looks out into the canyon, stepping close enough to the edge that the tips of her boots form two semi-circles over the deep dark gouge of space, covering nothing but air.

For only a second, Cora wants to fall.

Her phones beeps. Derek looks over, but says nothing.

_If I knew where you were, I’d wish I was there_.

Cora smiles. She told herself one text, but she _has_ to answer.

_What if I was somewhere awful_?

Cora waits. The sun is so bright, so high—she wonders if the canyon feels different at night.

The next text from Lydia makes Cora step back and away from the ledge, back where she knows she can survive.

_I’d follow you anywhere, Hale_.

*

Before South Dakota, they stop at the edge of Wyoming and ride a trolley.  
It was one of those little things, like the ducks and the train in Reno, one of the cheap little things they just see and do without thinking. It’s around dinner time, the sky is clear and streets are full, and they pass all of the sights without getting off the shuddering red and green car. Cora eats a donut and sips from a giant barrel of Diet Coke while Derek stares out the window, eyes following the spires of churches and rows of colorful houses.

“How about this one?” He asks Cora, nodding towards a light wood building with saloon doors and a plaque shaped like cowboy boots in the window. Neither of them consult their paper guidebooks.

Cora licks sugar off her thumb and shakes her head. The trolley is cool and pleasantly cheerful with the bustle of tourists. She doesn't want to move, not yet. 

“Don’t you want to see the museum, sweetheart?” An elderly woman asks at Cora’s elbow, gently touching her arm. Her gaze is kind, she has sunburn on her nose and plastic visor over her eyes, but in an instant, Derek reaches out and cuffs the woman’s hand away from Cora—hard.

Cora stands and backs towards the exit as the woman’s husband yells, “Hey, keep your hands off my wife!” Cora’s heart hammers in her chest and her body feels cracked open, soaked in the worst kind of energy, and for no reason at all, she takes two bounding steps off the trolley, flings her Coke onto the sidewalk, and runs.

She runs fast but it doesn't feel right; the buildings loom too high and there are too many people, they watch her as she flies by, hair flapping loose out of its braid. She doesn't realize she’s heaving out panicked sigh after panicked sigh, her breath caught in a hiccup in her throat, until she’s sprawled on the pavement, gasping for a clean breath. A chorus of worried voices ring out from all sides.

_“Oh my god, someone help her!”_

_“Is she alright?”_

_“Honey, I’m a nurse, can I help you up?”_

A part of Cora’s mind is peeling open, a part she kept hidden for so long— _where were you friendly folks when I was being raped by Ennis in an abandoned warehouse in San Diego, where were you when Kali gouged her nails into my eyes so hard I couldn't see for weeks, where were you when they made me heal so my brother couldn't see what happened when they “gave me back”? Huh? Where were you?_

“Cora…Cora, come on, I got you…let’s go back to the car, okay?” Suddenly she’s airborne in Derek’s arms, and she’s angry, she feels like a child, but she lets him carry her, and suddenly she’s laying in the backseat of Derek’s mom-mobile with a wet paper towel plastered over her forehead and Derek sitting stone-still in the driver’s seat.

“What happened?” His voice is shaking.

Cora swallows hard, her throat is like gravel. “I thought there was going to be a fight.”

“So?” Derek sighs, exasperated. “We've fought together before.”

“Not with little old ladies who touch my arm.”

Derek is quiet for a moment. “It was a reflex. I’m sorry, I should’ve been more careful.”

“Obviously.” 

This is when the road trip changes.

*

Things go blurry for a little while, but that’s okay. Cora doesn't mind the blur as long as she can reach out and feel Derek, warm and close to her, and remember that she’s with him and not them.

She misses Lydia, but her wolf misses her even more. _Mate_ , it howls morning to night, sometimes with a growl and sometimes with a moan. _My mate is gone, find my mate_. Cora doesn't tell Derek about those thoughts; she keeps the wolf to herself. As far as she can tell, Derek’s wolf has never mated before. Not with Kate, not with Jennifer. It was only Derek who loved them. 

Cora sneaks out of their motel room one night and crawls into the car to text Lydia.

_I need you right now_.

Cora’s wolf growls low in her chest, it sets her body on edge. She feels bowstring tight, nerves singing, her stomach clenching in anticipating arousal.

_I need some sleep…do you ever go to bed?_

Cora smiles. She won’t give up that easily, and Lydia wouldn't expect her to.

_Come meet me on the prairie. You’d like it here. Lots to explore._

_I wish I could be there in ten minutes. Maybe we could settle for something else._

Cora laughs softly, and she feels herself grow wet. She grinds her knees together.

_God, you drive me insane._

_Of course I do. Now what do you want tonight?_

Cora snaps open the button on her jeans; she can’t wait anymore. She’s been denying herself for weeks. Her fingers never feel like Lydia’s—Lydia is softer, curvier, her voice is breathier, and she has a way of smirking and looking at Cora through lowered lashes that sends shocks up and down Cora’s spine.

_I want to fuck you. So bad._

Cora doesn't pretend to be good at this.

_How bad?_

Nobody is pretending anymore.

_I want to take you apart. I want to tie you to me. I wish I could knot you, you have no idea._

Cora jumps a little as her cell rings—Lydia is calling. Cora’s breathing is labored but she scrambles to press ‘talk’. “H’llo?”

“You can’t say that. Not now, not after you left. You can’t do that to me.” Lydia isn't crying because she doesn't cry over phone calls or lost time, but her voice trembles with untapped frustration.

Cora sighs and lets her head drop onto the top of the seat. She doesn't say anything for a while, but she speaks before Lydia can hang up. “I just want to make you happy. I want to let you know I didn't leave _you_.”

Cora let herself go too easily with Lydia. Lydia was the only person who could do that to her anymore. Everything was buttoned, zipped, and locked up tight until Lydia came into the picture, then Cora was bare and flayed open.

“But you did. You act like you’re the only person who knows what werewolves feel, and need, and want.” Lydia’s voice is clearer, louder. She’s sounds so sure of herself. “Your uncle used me for a long time, Cora, and I felt him inside of me. I know what that wolf feels like. I know what it’s like to want to tear something apart because you love it so much.”

Cora doesn't get to respond. She doesn't get to say it is different when you’re born that way, when you and the wolf are one being and you need to satisfy each other’s cravings. She doesn't respond because Lydia wouldn't be saying this if she didn't think Cora needed to hear it.

Lydia continues. “I know what the knot means. Scott is one of my best friends, we aren't babies, we _talk_ about things that have changed us. The knot means forever. It means mate. And you use it like dirty talk. Don’t insult me like that.”

Cora wants to scream, Lydia is so wrong. “I would never say it if I didn't want it. But it doesn't fucking matter because I don’t _have_ one.”

The silence stretches long and thin, and Lydia sighs, short and huffy like she wants to have a comeback but nothing is coming. Then she hangs up.

Cora is miserable, bone-dry, and so pissed she wants to shift and never turn back, but she gets a text from Lydia ten seconds later.

_I want to be tied to you. But you’re not here._

*

When they arrive in South Dakota, Cora feels like an idiot when she realizes she won’t get to see the house Peter grew up in the way he painted it for her. It is hot and dry and windy just like everywhere else in the heart of the country—there’s no snow, no ice, no down jackets or piles of firewood. She didn't expect winter, of course. It was just the only way her mind planned it out.

“Let’s hike the rest of the way,” Derek says, pulling over on a dirt road along a sugar beet field. He gives Cora a small smile and she realizes what he means.

When she shifts, it hurts a little, aches in the places where bone healed a hundred times and muscle stitched itself back together over and over again. But the shift is always a good thing. If she shifts, she at least knows she still has it in her.

The run down the dirt road on two legs, faster and harder than humans, and once they disappear into the line of redwood trees and crumbling rocks along the mountains, they let the shift take over.

When they get to the cabin, it is nothing more than a shack with four walls. There is a tin sink on the porch and a broken wind chime by the front window. When Derek opens the door, the wood floor is covered in dead leaves and the ceiling is caved in. 

Cora tries to imagine her Uncle Peter growing up in that house. Smooth, sarcastic, handsome Uncle Peter whose intelligence was only matched by his wickedness—how did _that_ come from _this_? 

“So is this what you were hoping to find?” Derek pauses in the doorway.

Cora steps inside. “I think so.”

Despite what Derek said before, they stay in the old log cabin for five days.

*

“Cora?”  
Cora closes her eyes just as she starts to cry; it burns.

The line hums. Cora hasn't used a pay phone in years, but her cell phone got lost somewhere between Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, along with most of their laundry.

“Cora, are you there? I can hear you breathing. You can’t fool me, sweetheart.”

A gust of wind and rain beats against the smudged glass walls of the phone booth. Cora wraps the stiff phone cord around her arm until it pinches the fine hairs, then lets go.

“H-how’s it going?” It’s all she can say without sobbing.

Lydia laughs a little. “Not too bad, I guess. No dead bodies. It’s late, though, which is why you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“I forget sometimes,” Cora blurts out, her mouth tasting pasty and dry, and something breaks open and everything gushes out.

“You forget what?”

“I forget that I’m me,” Cora sobs, her chest heaving and her heart aching, just aching with a buildup of sadness and dirt and loneliness and absolute misery. “I forget that I’m _this_. I hate it, I hate it so much.” She sobs heavily, her shoulders slumped and weak, her nose clogged. “I hate who I am.”

“Stop it. Don’t you dare, don’t—Cora, please, don’t say that.” 

Cora hears the click of Lydia’s bedside lamp turning on and she can practically see Lydia sitting up in bed, red hair a tangled pile, satin camisole smooth against sleep-soft skin. She can practically smell her perfume against the sheets.

“I can’t come home, Lydia. I can’t go back.”

“This is _your_ home, not theirs. They’re gone, we made sure of it. We made Beacon Hills safe for you.”

Cora trusts Lydia. She’s also learning to trust Scott and Stiles and Allison, she’s even learning to trust Aiden and Ethan, who were beaten and raped and thrown around just as much as she was when they first found the alpha pack. 

But she doesn't trust herself anymore. Scott’s pack made Beacon Hills safe for her, but who was going to keep them safe? Cora was done losing people; she couldn't bear any more of it.

“I want to die sometimes. I want to die, I hate it so much. I miss you, and I miss my mother. I miss Erica and Boyd. I hate this.” Cora cries and cries, pressing a knuckle to her teeth. "I was forgetting for so long, and then Derek did this thing, and I _ran_ , and I realized...there is no forgetting. I'll always be like this."

Lydia is there, listening, her breathing sharp and focused. She’s already figuring out ways to fix the situation, and Cora doesn't have the heart to tell her it won’t work.

“I lost myself for a long time,” Lydia finally says, voice hollow.

Cora sniffles, and listens.

“I lost myself because of your family. Peter took me away, then Derek blamed _me_. I didn't want you in Beacon Hills for a long time, Cora. I wanted you gone, because you were a Hale, and you would only hurt me.”

Cora’s chest aches.

“But you never hurt me. Not once. You protected me. You fought for me. You were brave for me, Cora.”

Cora exhales, but she still aches. Lydia was wrong, _so_ wrong…Cora was never brave, she was never strong. Lydia was the one who saved her.

“But now you want to leave it all behind. You want to leave the town you fought for? You want to leave the friends you fought for? If you want to fight for something, fight for something meaningful.”

If that isn't slap to the face, Cora doesn't know what is. 

“You’re using that against me,” she tries, but it’s weak.

“Fuck off,” Lydia says. “I've felt death before. And you’re still alive.”

*

The car is definitely on its last leg, but Cora is confident it has some miles left. There’s still sand all over the floor mats; the rough felt seats feel like gravel against her sunburned back (burns go deeper than other wounds, they last longer). But the car has been their home all summer, and she’s going to see it to the end.

“Are you sure you’re ready to move? We can stay in Maine a little longer.” Derek likes Maine. Cora knows he wants to stay—he met a girl, a tall muscled thing with dark skin and long dark hair and a wonderful smile named Tara. Tara has stories, so many stories, and Cora and Derek spent a month sitting on the beach with her and just _listening_ to her, this person who has had an intense, wonderful, terrible life that is not _theirs_. 

But the beach is getting cooler. There are fewer tourists, which means less of a cover, and Derek says goodbye to Tara with only a little sadness. She gives him her address and phone number and seems truly interested in seeing him again. 

Derek is able to smile again. He still smiles. And that’s enough for Cora.

“I’m ready to go,” Cora says confidently, and mirrors his smile, that perfect white smile reserved only for moments like this.

He climbs into the driver’s seat, and she slides in next to him. As he turns the key, Cora sends one text to one person.

_On my way back._

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: There are non-explicit mentions of past abuse, including rape and torture. Sex is also discussed between two minor characters.
> 
> Title from "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey.
> 
> And Tara on the beach is from _True Blood_. That is one awesome character whose source material treats her like shit, so I put her on the beach and gave her a happy future.


End file.
